§ 16. On this hypothesis the soul must have ideas not derived from sensation or reflection, of which there is no appearance.-It is true, we have sometimes instances of perception, whilst we are asleep, and retain the memory of those thoughts: but how extravagant and incoherent for the most part they are, how little conformable to the perfection and order of a rational being, those who are acquainted with dreams, need not be told. This I would willingly be satisfied in, whether the soul, when it thinks thus apart, and as it were separate from body, acts less rationally than when conjointly with it or no: if its separate thoughts be less rational, then these men must say, that the soul owes the perfection of rational thinking to the body: if it does not, it is a wonder that our dreams should be, for the most part, so frivolous and irrational and that the soul should retain none of its more rational soliloquies and meditations. § 17. If I think when I know it not, nobody else can know it. Those who so confidently tell us, that "the soul always actually thinks," I would they would also tell us, what those ideas are that are in the soul of a child, before, or just at the union with the body, before it hath received any by sensation. The dreams of sleeping men are, as I take it, all made up of the waking man's ideas, though, for the most part, oddly put together. It is strange if the soul has ideas of its own, that it derived not from sensation or reflection (as it must have, if it thought before it received any impressions from the body), that it should never, in its private thinking (so private that the man himself perceives it not), retain any of them, the very moment it wakes out of them, and then make the man glad with new discoveries. Who can find it reasonable that the soul should, in its retirement, during sleep, have so many hours' thoughts, and yet never light on any of those ideas it borrowed not from sensation or reflection; or, at least, preserve the memory of none but such, which being occasioned from the body must needs be less natural to a spirit? It is strange the soul should never once in a man's whole life, recal over any of its pure native thoughts, and those ideas it had before it borrowed any thing from the body; never bring into the waking man's view, any other ideas but what have a tang of the cask, and manifestly derive their original from that union. If it always thinks, and so had ideas before it was united, or before it received any from the body, it is not to be supposed, but that, during sleep, it recollects its native ideas, and during that retirement from communicating with the body, whilst it thinks by itself, the ideas it is busied about, should be, sometimes at least, those more natural and congenial ones which it had in itself, underived from the body, or its own operations about them: which, since the waking man never remembers, we must, from this hypothesis, conclude, either that the soul remembers something that the man does not, or else that memory belongs only to such ideas as are derived from the body, or the mind's operations about them. § 18. How knows any one that the soul always thinks? For if it be not a self-evident proposition, it needs proof.-I would be glad also to learn from these men, who so confidently pronounce, that the human soul, or which is all one, that a man always thinks, how they come to ; know it? nay," how they come to know that they themselves think, when they themselves do not perceive it?" This, I am afraid, is to be sure without proofs; and to know, without perceiving it is, I suspect, a confused notion, taken up to serve an hypothesis; and none of those clear truths, that either their own evidence forces us to admit, or common experience makes it impudence to deny. For the most that can be said of it is, that it is possible the soul may always think, but not always retain it in memory and I say, it is as possible, that the soul may not always think, and much more probable, that it should sometimes not think, than that it should often think, and that a long while together, and not be conscious to itself the next moment after, that it had thought. § 19. That a man should be busy in thinking, and yet not retain the next moment, very improbable.-To suppose the soul to think, and the man not to perceive it, is, as has been said, to make two persons in one man and if one considers well these men's way of speaking, one should be led into a suspicion, that they do so. For they who tell us, that the soul always thinks, do never, that I remember, say, that a man always thinks. Can the soul think, and not the man? or a man think, and not be conscious of it? This, perhaps, would be suspected of jargon in others. If they say, the man thinks always, but is not always conscious of it; they may as well say, his body is extended without having parts. For it is altogether as intelligible to say, that a body is extended without parts, as that any thing thinks without being conscious of it, or perceiving that it does so. They who talk thus, may, with as much reason, if it be necessary to their hypothesis, say, that a man is always hungry, but that he does not always feel it: whereas, hunger consists in that very sensation, as thinking consists in being conscious that one thinks. If they say, that a man is always conscious to himself of thinking; I ask, how they know it? Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man's own mind. Can another man perceive that I am conscious of any thing, when I perceive it not myself? No man's knowledge here, can go beyond his experience. Wake a man out of a sound sleep, and ask him, what he was that moment thinking of? If he himself be conscious of nothing he then thought on, he must be a notable diviner of thoughts, that can assure him that he was thinking: may he not with more reason assure him he was not asleep? This is something beyond philosophy; and it cannot be less than revelation, that discovers to another, thoughts in my mind, when I can find none there myself: and they must needs have a penetrating sight, who can certainly see that I think, when I cannot perceive it myself, and when I declare that I do not; and yet can see that dogs or elephants do not think, when they give all the demonstration of it imaginable, except only telling us that they do so. This some may suspect to be a step beyond the Rosicrucians; it seeming easier to make one's self invisible to others, than to make another's thoughts visible to me, which are not visible to himself. But it is but defining the soul to be a substance that always thinks, and the business is done. If such a definition be of any authority, I know not what it can serve for, but to make many men suspect that they have no souls at all, since they find a good part of their lives pass away without thinking. For no definitions that I know, no suppositions of any sect, are of force enough to destroy constant experience; and perhaps it is the affectation of knowing beyond what we perceive, that makes so much useless dispute and noise in the world. § 20. No ideas but from sensation or reflection, evident, if we observe children.-I see no reason, therefore, to believe that the soul thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on; and as those are increased and retained, so it comes by exercise, to improve its faculty of thinking in the several parts of it, as well as afterward, by compounding those ideas, and reflecting on its own operations; it increases its stock, as well as facility, in remembering, imagining, reasoning, and other modes of thinking. 21. He that will suffer himself to be informed by observation and experience, and not make his own hypothesis the rule of nature, will find few signs of a soul accustomed to much thinking in a new-born child, and much fewer of any reasoning at all. And yet it is hard to imagine, that the rational soul should think so much and not reason at all. And he that will consider, that infants, newly come into the world, spend the greatest part of their time in sleep, and are seldom awake, but when either hunger calls for the teat, or some pain (the most importunate of all sensations), or some other violent impression on the body, forces the mind to perceive and attend to it. He, I say, who considers this, will, perhaps, find reason to imagine, that a fœtus in the mother's womb, differs not much from the state of a vegetable; but passes the greatest part of its time without perception or thought, doing very little in a place where it needs not seek for food, and is surrounded with liquor, always equally soft, and near of the same temper; where the eyes have no light, and the ears, so shut up, are not very susceptible of sounds; and where there is little or no variety or change of objects to move the senses. After some §22. Follow a child from its birth, and observe the alterations that time makes, and you shall find, as the mind by the senses comes more and more to be furnished with ideas, it comes to be more and more awake; thinks more, the more it has matter to think on. time, it begins to know the objects, which being most familiar with it, have made lasting impressions. Thus it comes, by degrees, to know the persons it daily converses with, and distinguish them from strangers; which are instances and effects of its coming to retain and distinguish the ideas the senses convey to it: and so we may observe, how the mind, by degrees, improves in these, and advances to the exercise of those other faculties of enlarging, compounding, and abstracting its ideas, and of reasoning about them, and reflecting upon all these, of which I shall have occasion to speak more hereafter. § 23. If it shall be demanded then, when a man begins to have any ideas? I think the true answer is, when he first has any sensation. For since there appear not to be any ideas in the mind, before the senses have conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval with sensation: which is such an impression or motion, made in some part of the body, as produces some perception in the understanding. It is about these impressions made on our senses by outward objects, that the mind seems first to employ itself in such operations as we call perception, remembering, consideration, reasoning, &c. § 24. The original of all our knowledge.-In time, the mind comes to reflect on its own operations, about the ideas got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. These are the impressions that are made on our senses by outward objects, that are extrinsical to the mind; and its own operations, proceeding from powers intrinsical and proper to itself, which when reflected on by itself, becoming also objects of its contemplation, are, as I have said, the original of all knowledge. Thus the first capacity of human intellect is, that the mind is fitted to receive the impressions made on it, either through the senses, by outward objects, or by its own operations, when it reflects on them. This is the first step a man makes towards the discovery of any thing, and the ground-work whereon to build all those notions which ever he shall have naturally in this world. All those sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as Heaven itself, take their rise and footing here in all that good extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote speculations, it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which sense or reflection have offered for its contemplation. § 25. In the reception of simple ideas, the understanding is for the most part passive.-In this part, the understanding is merely passive; and whether or no it will have these beginnings, and as it were materials of knowledge, is not in its own power. For the objects of our senses do, many of them, obtrude their particular ideas upon our minds, whether we will or no: and the operations of our minds will not let us be without, at least, some obscure notions of them. No man can be wholly ignorant of what he does when he thinks. These simple ideas, when offered to the mind, the understanding can no more refuse to have, nor alter, when they are imprinted, nor blot them out and make new ones itself, than a mirror can refuse, alter, or obliterate the images or ideas which the objects set before it do therein produce. As the bodies that surround us do diversely affect our organs, the mind is forced to receive the impressions, and cannot avoid the perception of those ideas that are annexed to them. CHAP. II.` OF SIMPLE IDEAS. § 1. Uncompounded appearances.-The better to understand the nature, manner, and extent of our knowledge, one thing is carefully to be observed concerning the ideas we have; and that is, that some of them are simple, and some complex. Though the qualities that affect our senses, are, in the things themselves, so united and blended, that there is no separation, no distance between them; yet, it is plain, the ideas they produce in the mind, enter by the senses, simple and uumixed. For though the sight and touch often take in from the same object, at the same time, different ideas; as a man sees at once motion and colour; the hand feels softness and warmth in the same piece of wax; yet the simple ideas thus united in the same subject, are as perfectly distinct as those that come in by different senses: the coldness and hardness which a man feels in a piece of ice, being as distinct ideas in the mind, as the smell and whiteness of the lily, or as the taste of sugar, and smell of a rose. And there is nothing can be plainer to a man, than the clear and distinct perceptions he has of those simple ideas; which being each in itself uncompounded, contains in it nothing but one uniform appearance or conception in the mind, and is not distinguishable into different ideas. § 2. The mind can neither make nor destroy them.-The simple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are suggested and furnished to the mind, only by those two ways above-mentioned, viz. sensation and reflection.* When the understanding is once stored with these Against this, that the materials of all our knowledge are suggested and furnished to the mind only by sensation and reflection, the Bishop of Worcester makes use of the idea of substance in these words: "If the idea of substance be grounded upon plain and evident reason, then we must allow an idea of substance, which comes not in by sensation or reflec. tion; and so we may be certain of something which we have not by these ideas." To which our authora answers: "These words of your lordship contain nothing, as I see, in them, against me; for I never said that the general idea of substance comes in by sensation and reflection; or that it is a simple idea of sensation or reflection, though it be ultimately founded in them; for it is a complex idea, made up of the general idea of something, or being, with the relation of a support to accidents. For general ideas come not into the mind by sensation or reflection, but are the creatures or inventions of the understanding, as, I think, I have shewn; and also how the mind makes them from ideas which it has got by sensation and reflection; and as to the ideas of relation, how the mind forms them, and how they are derived from, and ultimately terminate in, ideas of sensation and reflection, I have likewise shewn. "But that I may not be mistaken what I mean, when I speak of ideas of sensation and reflection, as the materials of all our knowledge; give me leave, my lord, to set down here a place or two, out of my book, to explain myself; as I thus speak of ideas of sensation and reflection: "That these, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes, and the compositions made out of them, we shall find to contain all our whole stock of ideas, and we have nothing in our minds which did not come in one of these two ways.'c This thought, in another place, I express thus: "These are the most considerable of those simple ideas which the mind has, and out of which is made all its other knowledge; all which it receives by the two forementioned ways of sensation and reflection." And, "Thus I have in a short draught given a view of our original ideas, from whence all the rest are derived, and of which they are made up.'e “This, and the like, said in other places, is what I have thought concerning ideas of sensation and reflection, as the foundation and materials of all our ideas, and consequently of all our knowledge: I have set down these particulars out of my book, that the reader, having a full view of my opinion herein, may the better see what in it is liable to your lordship's reprehension. For that your lordship is not very well satisfied with it, appears not only by the words under consideration, but by these also: But we are still told, that our understanding can have no other ideas, but either from sensation or reflection.' "Your lordship's argument, in the passage we are upon stands thus: If the general idea of substance be grounded upon plain and evident reason, then we must allow an idea of substance, which comes not in by sensation or reflection.' This is a consequence which, with submission, I think, will not hold, because it is founded upon a supposition which I think will not hold, viz. That reason and ideas are inconsistent;' for if that supposition be not true, then the general idea of substance may be grounded on plain and evident reason; and yet it will not follow from thence, that it is not ultimately grounded on and derived a In his First Letter to the Bishop of Worcester. d B. 2. c. 7. § 10. e B. 2. c. 1. § 5. e B. 2. c. 21. § 73. |